Thursday, December 7, 2017

Police are investigating the smashing of a window of a kosher restaurant in a heavily-Jewish part of the Dutch capital by a man wearing a Palestinian flag.

The incident at HaCarmel restaurant occurred Thursday morning, hours after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The AT5 television station showed a video of the incident, in which a man holding a large stick while holding a Palestinian flag and wearing a Palestinian keffiyah, or shal, on his head proceeds to smash the windows and kick down the restaurant’s doors as passersby and two police officers look on. The officers wait until he breaks into the restaurant. They pause as he returns out to the street from the restaurant’s interior holding an Israeli flag that he took from there. He throws it at their feet. Then they overpower the man and arrest him.

Contacted by JTA, an employee at HaCarmel declined to comment on the circumstances of the incident, which the Federative Jewish Netherlands group reported online with a pictures of a Dutch police officer kneeling in front of a shattered glass window, with a Star of David hanging on the restaurant’s wall in the background.

“Jerusalem is recognized as the capital by the United States of America, so the windows of an Israeli restaurant in Amsterdam are smashed. Only logical. The Palestinian shall complete the story,” Federative Jewish Netherlands wrote on Twitter.